Theodore Sturgeon – Page 5

Commentary: How (and why) I make ebooks out of paperbooks

SFFaudio Commentary

When you’ve got an old paperback book that’s coming apart at the spine, with pages falling out all over the place it’s time to consider making it immortal. In order to do that, in a reasonable period of time, you must kill the book. That’s the hardest part of the process. The actual transformation is pretty easy.

To do it I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 which came with Adobe Acrobat Standard 9. Here are three videos I put together that show the process of turning a paperback into an ebook:

And here’s a PDF |SAMPLE| of the result.

Update:
John writes in to say:

I read your recent post about digitizing print books with interest. I wondered if you might be able to expand on your process a bit, as it seemed to me like a few steps were missing from your video.

Indeed, here are my answers to some specific questions:

How do you actually sever all the pages from the book?

Most of the time this can be done just with your hands, at least with paperbacks and old magazines. The only tools I’ve ever needed to use are flathead screwdriver, to pry up staples found in some mags from the 1960s and 1970s, and scissors which I’ve used to trim out glued edges. If you’re doing a hardcover with sewn binding you’d probably be able to do it with just an X-Acto knife.

When you run the pages through the scanner, does it scan both sides of the page simultaneously? Or do you have to scan them all twice?

The Fujitsu ScanSnap is not only superfast, it’s also supersmart, it scans both sides at the same time (technically the term is “duplex”).

If so, how do you collate them so the pages are all in the right order?

The bundled software, called ScanSnap Manager, allows you to customize the named output files. I usually have them just come out as 001, 002, 003, etc..

How long does it take you to digitize a single book?

Lets see I’ve just scanned the February 1976 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction which has 128 pages (64 leaves). In the scanning itself I set a stopwatch. It took 1 minute 30 seconds to scan the entire mag. The software took another 45 seconds of processing. And I spent about 30 seconds correcting orientation on a few pages. So under three minutes for 128 pages

Have you tried this on hardcovers as well, or just paperbacks?

I don’t think I’ve done more than a couple of hardcovers, they were really easy though as they were essentially unbound already.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Diamond Lens by Fitz James O’Brien

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Diamond Lens by Fitz James O'Brien - illustration uncredited - December 1926 issue of Amazing Stories

I’ve created a |PDF| from the printing in the December 1926 issue of Amazing Stories.

Introduction to the October 1933 issue of Amazing in which The Diamond Lens was published

The Diamond Lens - Illustration by Morrey

I’ve created a |PDF| from the printing in the October 1933 issue of Amazing Stories.

In his introductory essay “Expanding The Lens“, found in to the story in The Road To Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh To Wells, editor James Gunn writes:

“[The Diamond Lens] is the first known story in which another world is perceived through a microscope… [this story] opened up another world, not just for readers, but for writers as well.” Gunn goes on to praise O’Brien’s “realistic treatment of the fantastic” and says that “‘The Diamond Lens‘” may be the first modern science-fiction story.”

LibriVox narrator Corrina Schultz describes The Diamond Lens this way:

“This story has a bit of everything – obsessive scientist, psychic medium contacting the dead, clever murder cover-up, racism, creepy stalker, college student shirking his studies, the painful results of pursuing forbidden knowledge, the noble savage…”

Atop those words I myself can heap a few other attractors:

1. The Diamond Lens is bizarre in both plot and focus, with episodic like writing <-Weird for a short story. 2. It has the sensibility of a foreign culture <-The 19th century attitude toward seances is pretty fucking foreign! 3. The protagonist is a mad microscopist. <-Perhaps he was demented by the illicit lure of science? 4. The story features a brutal killing. <-With a whackjob of added racism to complicate matters! 5. It has a noir ending. <-My favourite kind. As you may have guessed I quite enjoyed The Diamond Lens.

Stories like Harl Vincent’s Microcosmic Buccaneers (1929), Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God (1941) and both Sunken Universe (1942) and Surface Tension (1952) by James Blish all stem from the microscopic pioneering of The Diamond Lens. Whereas the theme, of an alien female object of adoration in an unreachable land, also brings to mind a mighty parallel with Jack Williamson’s The Green Girl (1930). And one final note, a quick read of the Wikipedia entry for Fitz James O’Brien makes me think some of the tale is autobiographical!

The Diamond Lens
By Fitz James O’Brien; Read by Corinna Schultz
1 |MP3| – Approx. 57 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox
Published: FORTHCOMING
A scientist, having invented a powerful microscope, discovers a beautiful female living in a microscopic world inside a drop of water. First published in the January 1858 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

The Weird Circle The Diamond Lens
Based on the story by Fitz-James O’Brien; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Broadcaster: MBS, NBC, ABC
Broadcast: December 31, 1944
Provider: Archive.org

Arthur C. Clarke describes The Diamond Lens (from an article in Playboy)

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #129 – READALONG: The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #129 – Jesse, Tamahome, Julie and Jenny discuss the Audible Frontiers audiobook of The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

Talked about on today’s show:
Aliens, first contact, alien aliens, Theodore Sturgeon, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, evil genius inventor, a society in a bottle, how do we figure out which information is true, L.J. Ganser, “Fyunch(click)”, space empire, the Horse-Head Nebula, the depth of the alien alienness, who has free will in The Mote In God’s Eye?, “there was little of free will in an engineer”, “humans have free will – we know that”, Ron Paul has gone Crazy Eddie, Outies, The Gripping Hand, Renner is an independent minded contrarian, the CoDominium Series, “an American eagle holding the hammer and sickle”, MacArthur and Lenin, brownies, espionage, Sally never questioned her Fyunch(click), the characters are peripheral to the novel’s power, Niven and Pournelle arguing with each other, perfunctory romance, The Sandkings by George R.R. Martin, Treehouse of Horror VII, god games, Populous, Sid Meier’s Civilization, Master Of Orion, Science Fiction is not really about the future it’s about the present (except for Niven/Pournelle books), Protector by Larry Niven (in which humans are infantilized aliens), “only bad girls take birth control”, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote In God’s Eye is a yellow peril story!, Philip K. Dick’s The Man In The High Castle, gunboat diplomacy, “China has fake Apple stores”, the exotic East, “I asked myself … would that be so bad?”, “they’re not evil, they’re just our enemies”, Declare by Tim Powers, Soviet goals, “every place should be communist”, Russia vs. The USA, an unsustainable quarantine, this book is really about “the pill”, overpopulation, Malthus, Moties are people too (at least most of them are), a non-ideological clash of species, what “sentient” means, Eric S. Rabkin, do they have souls?, is it “scientifically proven” that an untrained kitten can never hunt?, “I don’t eat monkeys”, “nuclear war is the continuation of evolution by other means”, the long pig, is there an unused Chekov’s Gun in this book?, ozone smells good, imitations and perma-smiles, anti-yellow peril blinders, John W. Campbell, “give me an alien that thinks as well as a man but not like a man”, “if only the humans wee more human.”

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBS Radio Mystery Theater: The Creature From The Swamp

SFFaudio Online Audio

“Soon after ‘It‘ appeared in Unknown (the pulp mag competitor of the Weird Tales title which showcased Conan and Kull and Lovecraft), Ted Sturgeon’s name was a household word – at least if you lived in a house-hold where fantasy books lined creaking shelves. More Than Human, ‘Microcosmic God‘ and The Synthetic Man were still in the future, but it was all there – all the talent and the promise – lying there newborn and naked and writhing in a story called ‘It‘ which has never been topped in its field, and which has itself directly or in, directly spawned a virtual army,of gloopy-glop monsters which have infiltrated nearly every comics company which ever went into hock for a four-color printing press.”

-From an essay entitled A Somewhat Personal Pronouncement by Roy Thomas (found in Supernatural Thrillers #1 – December 1972)

The Creature From The Swamp

If there is a concise history of fictional wetland creatures with non-specific pronoun-noun names I’m not aware of it. Be it an IT, a MAN-THING or a SWAMP THING I’ve a a real HEAP of fascination for the merging (or emerging) of man-like-life from decay and vegetable matter.

Here’s a brief timeline of my own devising:

August 1940 – Street & Smith’s Unknown Fantasy Fiction -> It! by Theodore Sturgeon
(a composite being of mud, mold, decaying foliage surrounds a human skeleton and comes alive)

1942 – Hillman Periodicals -> The Heap
(the will of a WWI flying ace clings “to the smallest shred of life through sheer force of will” and arises from swamp muck in a rotted body intermingled with vegetation)

May 1971 – Marvel Comics -> Man-Thing
(a “slow-moving, empathic, humanoid” that had once been a man arises)

July 1971 – DC Comics -> Swamp Thing
(a plant elemental awakens)

December 1972 – Marvel Comics -> Supernatural Thrillers -> A comics adaptation of the original It!

March 1974 – CBS Radio Mystery Theater -> The Creature From The Swamp

I really enjoyed this production from CBS Radio Mystery Theater’s first season. It is obviously inspired by its predecessors but it also incorporates some earlier mythology to good, and mysterious effect.

Go now, follow Larry Drake, a man burned by the flames of the past, follow him into the swamp. See what fate befalls him. See what fate befalls the beautiful woman he rescues from a frightening creature that lays waiting within the marshy depths of the Devil’s Cauldron.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater – #0053 – The Creature From The Swamp
By Ian Martin; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Broadcaster: CBS
Broadcast: March 7, 1974
Provider: CBSRMT.com

Cast:
Robert Dryden
Jack Grimes
Leon Janney
Joan Loring

Posted by Jesse Willis

KCUR interview with Noël Sturgeon, James Gunn and Elspeth Healey about Theodore Sturgeon

SFFaudio Online Audio

KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR station, recorded an interview with Noël Sturgeon, James Gunn and Elspeth Healey talking about “the life, works and literary papers of Theodore Sturgeon.” Here’s the file |MP3|

[via aboutsf.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #120

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #120 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk to Allan Kaster, the editor of the new audiobook collection The Year’s Top Ten Tales Of Science Fiction 3.

Talked about on today’s show:
Infinivox, post-singularity, Mars, talking animals, emperors, will the post-singularity fiction subgenre be over by 2040?, Charles Stross, Gardner Dozois, post singularity is the magic of Science Fiction, Robert Reed, Under The Moons Of Venus by Damien Broderick, talking dogs, “I didn’t like it in a Science Fiction way”, detective fiction, insanity and crazy people, The Emperor Of Mars by Allen M. Steele, a tribute to martian fiction, the Asimov’s reader’s Award, Emperor Norton of the United States, Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF are now available in the Kindle store, ebooks (and emags) with ads, Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Stephen King, Flowers For Algernon, Subterranean Online, Lightspeed magazine, Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain by Yoon Ha Lee, Clarkesworld, The Things by Peter Watts, Elegy For A Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi, the Science Fiction boom is here, Fantasy, a blossoming of novellas, PS Publishing, Subterranean Press, novellas make for an excellent idea delivery mechanism, Prime Books, The Year’s Best Science Fiction And Fantasy 2011, Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, Stories Of Your Life and Other Stories by Ted Chiang, Infinivox will have a new collection of Science Fiction novellas in the fall: The Year’s Top Short SF Novels, The Things by Peter Watts (read by Kate Baker), The Emperor Of Mars was on Tony Smith’s StarShip Sofa (read by Quartershare author Nathan Lowell), John Carpenter’s The Thing movie vs. John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?, Howard Hawks, re-working Science Fiction’s legacy fiction in new stories, the stinger comes from sympathizing with a horrible monster, communion, the Shirley Jackson award, Re-Crossing The Styx by Ian R. MacLeod, Scott likes Noir, Double Indemnity, zombies, “even though they’re dead they need entertainment”, The Love Boat, Tom Dheere, he always gets the Science Fiction vocab pronunciation right, Eight Miles by Sean McMullen, Australia, the best story in Analog last year (was Eight Miles), steampunk, is steampunk SF?, steampunk-ish, an Asian cover, Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain by Yoon Ha Lee is ornate and literary SF (and kind of Ted Chiang-like), there’s a logic going on, The Shipmaker by Alliette de Bodard, Nicola Barber, Larry Niven’s Star Trek episode (The Slaver Weapon), Kzinti are in the Star Trek universe, we need another good Science Fiction (TV) series, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Fredric Brown, Neil Gaiman, Doctor Who, Babylon 5 was our last best hope for SF on TV, A Letter From The Emperor by Steve Rasnic Tem, fun with mind-wiping, emotional stingers, Adrift by Scott D. Danielson, emotional vs. intellectual SF, bureaucracy doesn’t end, there are lots of lost packets between planets, it derives its power from the characters rather than from the intellectual points, intellectual stimulation vs. emotional stimulation, Elegy For A Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi, consciousness-uploading, it’s comic book like, a bit like Dan Simmons, Alone by Robert Reed, the prolific Robert Reed, God-Like Machines edited by Jonathan Strahan, Alastair Reynolds’s Troika is in there too, A History Of Terraforming by Robert Reed, Dead Man’s Run by Robert Reed, Marrow by Robert Reed, an old-fashioned Science Fiction story writer, SFBRP #008 Luke’s review of Marrow, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Starship Vectors edited by Allan Kaster, SFSignal’s review of Starship Vectors, The Shipmaker by Alliette de Bodard, The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey, mutant children are shipped off into the universe to fall in love with their crews, giving birth to a cyborg, Shipmaker reminded Tam of Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler, was dramatized on 2000X, how do you read/listen to anthologies?, is there any chance of doing a year’s top ten 1961? 1965?, how about the top ten of the 1960s?, Charles Stross, A Colder War by Charles Stross |READ OUR REVIEW|, Lobsters by Charles Stross |READ OUR REVIEW|, Accelerando by Charles Stross, “Please Alan, fulfill my hopes and dreams.”

Posted by Jesse Willis